CAN Europe Positions

CAN Europe position on the regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union

Details

Category: CAN Europe Positions

Published: 07 March 2017

The Commission proposal for a Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union contains some positive elements. But in the absence of binding national targets for energy efficiency and renewable energy, the Commission proposal does not provide incentives for Members States to make appropriately ambitious pledges regarding their national contributions on renewable energy and energy efficiency. It also does not convincingly define what happens if the national contributions do not add up to the EU targets.

In summary, CAN Europe calls on the European Parliament and Council to improve the proposed legislation by taking into account the following key political demands:

Strengthen the provisions on setting and assessing the national contributions for renewable energy and energy efficiency to ensure that the EU targets will be met

Maintain the requirement for Member States to include in their NECPs linear trajectories between 2021-2030 for the renewable energy and energy efficiency national contributions

Require that these linear trajectories are to be used by the Commission to check whether Member States and the EU as a whole are on track, both for the renewable energy and the energy efficiency targets

Maintain the provision that Member States shall only modify their targets, objectives and contributions upwards, to reflect an increased ambition

Integrate the long-term strategies within the NECPs, rather than having those strategies as an ‘add-on’ document

Use the 2050 milestone – i.e. the timeline foreseen for countries’ mid-century strategies as agreed in Paris in 2015 - as horizon for the long-term strategies developed as part of the governance regulation

Improve the binding template for the national energy and climate plans (NECPs) by including policies and measures related to a smart retirement process of polluting power production sources, policies and measures to phase-out fuel fossil-fuel subsidies, and a clearer references to 2050 climate targets

Add a binding reporting template and key ex-post reporting indicators in the Annexes of the Regulation proposal

Include provisions to adjust the EU's 2030 policy framework as a result of the UNFCCC's facilitative dialogue in 2018 and following the submission of the EU's revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, to ensure that targets and measures reflect the progression contained in the revised NDC

Latest Publications

The report reveals that none of the EU countries provide a comprehensive overview of their fossil fuel subsidies nor a concrete plan to phase them out in their draft NECPs, despite having committed to end fossil fuel subsidies ten years ago through the G20.

This study pulls together the many pieces of the enormous puzzle often referred to as externalities of coal exploitation, yet another term blurring our appreciation of the entire toll we all pay for continued reliance on coal - in Mugla and elsewhere.

Coordinated by SDG Watch Europe and launched at the UN High Level Political Forum on the SDGs in July 2019, this report shadows the EU's own assessment of its progress on Agenda 2030 by looking at the negative externalities and spill-over effects of EU policies in developing countries.